


devoted not to love you again

by sugargroupie



Category: Farscape
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugargroupie/pseuds/sugargroupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He refuses to believe Aeryn has been fated to break his heart over and over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	devoted not to love you again

**Author's Note:**

> a short fic i found in my unfinished folder from a while back. no beta. spoilers up to _Dog With Two Bones_ , with references to _Terra Firma_.

Every reality and then, she leaves him. The details change, but the end result remains the same.

After lunch with Jack, she disappears before John can catch up, never to be seen again. Dad - _Jack_ \- meets his eyes and says something appropriately cliche. "Son, you gotta let her go if it's meant to be."

And that's the thing; the funny, fucking tragic thing of it all. He's let her go, it seems, over and over again. And the one time he'd had her it hadn't been him at all.

Jack wouldn't understand it all, and John doesn't have it in him to explain. Little details he can't mention, like what it means to be a carbon copy, the envy he feels, and grieving the death of himself when a part of him is glad that bastard is gone.

Now it's supposed to be John's turn and his chance has just walked out the door.

No, John thinks, his dad has no idea what he's asking of him, to let Aeryn go.

  
*

Sometimes, she contacts him through one of Moya's old comms that chirps mysteriously from his shirt pocket.

One minute he's staring at Caroline with his hand on her shoulder and the next he's holding her at arms length, wondering - wondering _what is that noise?_

 _"John, are you there? It's Aeryn. Can you answer me please?"_

He almost wishes he couldn't. He glances at Caroline, who is walking around his apartment as if all of this is normal, to have this voice haunting him.

And then there's Aeryn, calling for him, and he all but forces the words out of his mouth. "I'm here. Will I see you soon?" It's a gamble and it feels like he's reached the end already, where all of his other plans have come to die.

 _"Crichton."_ John imagines Aeryn stands a little straighter as she says his name, her hair pulled back in a braid; face tight with the effort it takes not to show any outward emotion.

"Hey, you called me. So are you coming back?" Silence, as he counts the passing seconds to himself. Then finally: _"Goodbye John."_

It feels like a void he's shouted into many times before, reverbs of the same old pain - and why the fuck hasn't he learned his lesson yet?

At least he doesn't have to watch her retreating back.

  
*

Aeryn can't pronounce "charge" in English, but she tells him in no uncertain terms that she's joined SWAT, and he can go frell himself if he means to stop her.

John grins, wide and a little bit desperate, because this is a reality he can trust.

(He believes, because she tells him to frell off; frell yourself; _frell frell frell_ , when his tongue is occupied with licking her cunt.)

He worries, hides his resentment of this new job that puts her life in danger; resentful that she escapes where he can't follow.

Months later he stands in the hospital, fists clenched, short nails digging half-moons of faint blood into his palm. He can't trust himself to take a proper breath.

Only when Aeryn is home, her side bandaged from a stray bullet wound, does he breathe deeply, trusting his surroundings.

  
*

She rejects him wholesale. Doesn't come to Earth at all, but simply boards her Prowler, taking her secrets with her and leaving his expectations behind.

Next time, John thinks, he'll suggest a coin toss. He refuses to believe Aeryn has been fated to break his heart over and over again.

  
*

She says goodbye with lips and tongue, her body stretched atop his, fingers around his cock. Aeryn makes him beg for release, and secures her own with a clean conscience.

It's this reality that John hates the most. Hell, even his body is being rejected.

  
*

She leaves him by way of death; body riddled with bullets from a SWAT assignment gone wrong.

It's selfish and he feels petulant even giving these thoughts weight, but wonders if Aeryn died thinking of who she was leaving behind. John's never been able to stop thinking of her, and maybe that's been his problem.

He has a list of things to occupy his mind after it happens, like how a former Peacekeeper could be taken down so effortlessly. He thinks of Aeryn's fellow SWAT teammates and remembers how she spoke of them with such familiarity, sometimes as if they were the only thing grounding her on his home planet. Made her a part of something he alone couldn't provide. He thinks briefly: for all that SWAT represented for Aeryn they couldn't prevent her death, and it should've been him guarding her six all along.

No ice planet to preserve her, no Zhaan to revive her, just the cold earth to consume her.

John can't give her the space burial she deserves.

  
*

One day (reality), Aeryn will come back. John hopes he has the courage to meet her halfway.

-f-  



End file.
